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Product Ideas: The 5 best Places to Find Products to Sell Online (Product Research Tutorial)

Are you looking for profitable products to sell online? If you're a drop shipper or any type of a new business owner, choosing the right product is going to be instrumental to your success.From branding to marketing, to shipping and pricing. it’s going to shape your entire business. But, coming up with a great product idea is a little bit tricky. And, aimlessly searching on Google is only really going to get you so far. Fortunately, there are amazing opportunities out there and
we put together a shortlist of five places that you can go to find some product ideas.

Let’s get started.

Welcome back, my name is Michelle Bali. I'm a creative strategist. If you're a new entrepreneur, I want you to think about subscribing because of each week. We’re going to be bringing you step-by-step coaching on how to start, run, and grow your online business. Also, make sure that you're sticking around until the end of this video. Because I'm going to give you a formula on how to come up with some truly unique ideas to develop brand new products that people are going to be excited to buy. And, you're going to be equally as excited to sell.

Online Consumer Trend Publications

All right, let's get into it, Online consumer trend publications. Following consumer trend publications can expose you to new products and new industries. That you maybe didn't even know existed. But one of my favorite publications is Trend Hunter.

Trend Hunter

They're the world's largest trend community, with over 200,000 hunters dedicated to finding you the latest trends. You can find trends from pretty much any industry. So we're an e- commerce store, so let's go into a culture, and then we'll hit the internet to see what's trending online. And, there's some pretty cool niche stuff here. We have to empower pandemic emoji designs, and you know what already, just off the top of my head. We could create a drop shipping business, selling socks using these types of designs. It's funny because Jeremy, the founder of Trend Hunter, wanted to be an entrepreneur. But, he didn't know what idea he wanted to pursue. And, so he was hunting for inspiration and that's How Trend Hunter was born.

Meta

But I also want you to check out PSFK. They are a membership-based platform that provides personalized trends and research. That’s going to help you stay ahead of the curve. You can use
these resources to identify trends that are happening in other parts of the world. And, then bring them home. That's how Dan started Inkas.

Inkas

Inkas is a shoe brand made of authentic South American textiles. Dan spotted the trend and he thought that it would also do well in North America.

He was right and he successfully funded his Kick-starter project. He rose over $77,000 in pre- orders. Industry leaders. If you have an industry that interests you, following influencers that are always on top of trends can give you some nice tip-offs. To discover influencers, I want you to check out Dovetale.

Dovetale

With Dovetale you can search influencers by industry, location, and even the amount of followers. I'll leave a link in the description box for a free trial to dovetale. But, there are also several other online tools that you can use. You can discover influencers with Follower wonk and all top as well.

Social Curation Sites

Image curation sites can be a gold mine for product ideas. Just by looking at the likes, you can sometimes get a sense, if there's going to be a market for a specific product or niche. you probably already know about Pinterest? But, here are a few more sites that you can check out. Check out We Heart It. Here you can find beauty, fashion, photography, and travel ideas. Also, check out DudePins.

DudePins

DudePins is a place to discover and buy products targeted towards males. Another place to check out is Fancy. They described themselves as part store, part magazine, and part wish list. Use it to find a range of gift ideas.

Wanelo

So, Wanelo, also known as want need love, describes itself as an online community for all of the world's best shopping, bringing together products and stores on Pinterest. like product posting format.

B2B wholesale marketplaces

Why not find your product ideas straight from the source? Wholesale and manufacturers are going to expose you to thousands of potential product ideas. And, also it makes sense to start here, because if you see something that you like. you know, you can start selling it right away.

Alibaba And Ali Express

So you probably have already heard of Ali Express and Alibaba. But, these are platforms that connect consumers with manufacturers from Asia. They have hundreds of thousands of products, and there's not much that you can't find. But, the main difference between Ali Baba and Ali express is that; Alibaba is intended for B2B transactions.

Alibaba is going to help businesses purchase large quantities of products directly from the manufacturers at wholesale prices. Whereas, Ali express on the other hand is open to consumers. So, if you want to test the market. check out Ali express for smaller quantities.

Oberlo

Like Aliexpress, Oberlo is also a marketplace, but this marketplace is owned by Shopify. Your suppliers sort the inventory and ship orders directly to your shoppers. Oberlo integrates seamlessly with Shopify, which makes it a popular option to find ideas and stock your products. Oberlo also has a trending product section to help out browse for popular and trending items. Some other B2B marketplaces include Trade Key, Global Sources, Made-in-China, and Wholesale Central.

Industry And Niche Forums

Depending on the industry that you're targeting, there may be a forum site out there for you. Gaming is one of those industries that have a particularly active online community. You can check out forums like games, FAQ, or NeoGAF. But, if you're in fashion, check out the Fashion Spot. and, if you're in fitness, head over to Nerd Fitness Rebellion. And, you can also check out geeks to go. If you're in another industry that I haven't mentioned. Just type in your niche into Google, followed by the word forum, and then you should see a few come up there. And, also don't forget about Reddit.

Reddit

So, Reddit is the forum of all forums, where you can find any industry, any niche, any culture, and subculture.

All right!

So those are five solid places to get your gears turning. I recommend you start there. But if you're looking to create brand new products from scratch. Here’s this cool method to help you start with some ideas. If you're hungry, for more knowledge, you're going to want to check out
this free 40-minute webinar. It's going to teach you how to find and source a winning product to sell. How to validate that idea and how to get started? Just click the link in the description box below.

How To Produce Brand New Ideas?

  1. This thinking theory comes from a book called a technique for producing ideas. It's written by James Webb young. It's one of my favorite books. But, the theory is that an idea occurs when you combine two or more existing ideas. Your ability to bring old ideas together. To create something new is going to depend largely on your ability to see relationships.
  2. The concept argues that there are no new ideas, only iterations. So, here is the five-step technique to combining old ideas to create something new.
  3. Step number one. So first you gather material. This includes specific material that's related to your product. And, that's going to be information on your target audience and your competitors.
  4. Target audience: Craft questions about the problems and the challenges they face. Which products do they love? Which products do they hate? What do they wish that they had to enhance their everyday life? So places to collect information are; consumer- facing publications. These types of publications within your industry can reveal a lot about a market segment and what's trending.
  5. Do audience surveys: So these are one of the best ways to get quantitative and qualitative insights into your audience. Also, check out SEO analytics and insights. This can show you what's trending on search globally or targeted to a specific geographic location.
  6. Competitor research: Learn from the successes of your competitors and popular businesses in your chosen industry. What products were launched with massive success and why were they so successful? Places to collect this information are competitor websites for one. So, here you can look at the copy. How did they describe their product? What customer pain points are they targeting? Identify gaps in your competitor's product offerings? And look for ways to fill those gaps with your new product.
  7. Competitor communities: Go to their social media networks and ask about their audiences. And, why do they love their products? Look at what the brand is saying to consumers and how consumers are interacting with them online? After this, you're also going to want to collect general material.
  8. The general material is going to take on a form of fascination with a wide range of concepts. So look at historical trends, look at world issues. The more general knowledge that you have. the more opportunity you have to create new relationships and new connections between ideas. As long as you're acting as a sponge in this phase, then you're on the right track.
  9. The next step is an intense analysis of what you've just learned. So work over the materials in your mind. Talk about it with your network. Do mind maps. Take notes. You want to mentally chew your new material by looking at it from all different angles. At

this stage, you're also going to want to experiment by fitting ideas together. So do this by making an idea generation table.

Here's mine, I made a column of existing products. Then a column of world issues. My products listed here are coming from the specific research that I did in the step before. And, the world issues are coming from the general research from the step before. I created a third column, where I will fill in possible solutions by combining these first two columns. The aim of this is to create meaningful new ideas that can impact the world.

So, this next step is almost counter-intuitive. If you're going to want to step away from the exercise. get away from your desk and just completely put it out of your mind. This is going to be difficult because once you were on a roll; obviously leaving it is the last thing. that you're going to want to do. But, in doing this, you're allowing the subconscious to work.

During this free time, do something that energizes you. Does something that brings you joy? Go on a walk outside; do some yoga, just free your mind completely. Now you have to allow the idea to come back to you naturally. This requires a lot of patience; it requires a lot of discipline. But, your idea will come back to you with a flash of insight.

But this will only happen after you've stopped stranding your mind. Many ideas are lost in this final stage. because of the lack of patience, so just think of this as the art of letting go. Once the idea has come to you, your next step is to produce your idea and then test it in the real world. Make sure that you're asking for constructive criticism.

Good Ideas Have Self-Expanding Qualities

Good ideas have self-expanding qualities. So, when someone sees it, they're going to be excited to tell you how to improve on your idea? So only ask people who are within your industry or your target market. But, then listen intently to their feedback. Don't be too precious about your ideas. And, make sure that you're adapting it as needed. Be mindful that the ego can blind us at this stage. The ego is going to want to stop us from adapting our ideas to fit the actual conditions of the world. And, this may be because of stubbornness or pride. But, if you think of this as a phase where we validate the usefulness and the demand of our new idea. Then, your openness to learn is going to be what makes you successful.

Try To Learn More And Train Your Mind To Grasp New Knowledge

The key with this is less about knowing where to look for your particular idea, but more about training the mind to grasp the principles and training the eye, to see the relationships. If you're excited about the product that you're making. You’re going to genuinely involve yourself in the research and getting into the business of it. So, just make it easy on yourself.
Choose something that you're passionate about. Becoming fascinated with what you do is a full and rich way to live, and it's going to ensure that you never run out of ideas. But, if you're stuck on finding your passion and want me to make a video on how to find your passion?

All right! I feel like that was a fun one. How do you guys feel about that lesson? Do you guys prefer more step-by-step tutorials or do you like this theory-based skill-building that we did today? Let me know in the comment section. It would be great to hear your feedback. And, also if you have a friend entrepreneur send them this link.

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